Introduction to Technical Diving.

To set the stage for a forum on scientific applications of "Technical Diving" it is perhaps relevant first to describe what technical diving is and where it came from. This involves several steps, a description of the technology and the terminology used to describe it, a bit about how it got started, how it spread, and how it evolved into a relatively stable if not standard set of practices. It is relevant to point out that it was not exactly invented here, but in fact many aspects of it had been practiced for some years before.